I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.

Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for it.

Americans, indeed, often seem to be so overwhelmed by their children that they’ll do anything for them except stay married to the co-producer.

I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one Western you’ve seen the lot; but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.

As anyone who has ever fallen foul of an airport, a conventional hospital or a bad restaurant knows, misery is made up of little things...

Newish friends, if they get ghastly, can be weighed and found wanting, but you’d never do a thing like that to old ones; their terrible habits are just part of the universe.

It beats me how Freud could say “What do women want?” as if we all must want the same thing.

And what would happen to my illusion that I am a force for order in the home if I wasn’t married to the only man north of the Tiber who is even untidier than I am?

I just wish, when neither of us has written to my husband’s mother, I didn’t feel so much worse about it than he does.

It’s a pity more men are not bastards by birth instead of vocation.